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Welcome to Musicland!

Welcome to Musicland!

You are among the first visitors!
Thank you for coming and enjoy your journey!

You are now just entering Musicland!
What is Musicland?
Musicland is the land of accessible music.
You are here because you like making music, don't you!
Well. Here you will find some very interesting people, who are just waiting for you.
They have strange names, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la si,
Later you will find funny costumes, called sharp, flat, ties, slurs and still more unusual ways of measuring distances. You undoubtedly know what a step is. Here in Musicland they talk about intervals, but they mean much the same thing.

But before I take you around this new country, let me make sure you've got all you need in order to feel at home!

Have you ever been to the seaside, or up a mountain, or maybe for an excursion in the snow?
Before setting out from home you, no doubt, made sure that you were wearing appropriate clothing. At the seaside you would not wear a cloak, or a coat, but rather a swimming costume!
To walk through Musicland, and to have a pleasant time there, you need to know some rules in order to be able to do things.

A few concepts and a few skills will help you to find your way and to make yourself understood by the Musiclandians. Don't run away just now!

Which concepts am I talking about?
Nothing that you do not know already.
You certainly know what a PC keyboard is!
When you are in Musicland, you can decide to transform you keyboard into a Perkins Brailler, if you wish.
If you have never seen one, you can transform it into a sort of slate and stylus.
If you don't know what that is, no problem! You can use your normal keyboard just as you normally do.

If you are not familiar with your PC keyboard, you are in the same situation as someone who goes into the snow wearing a swimming costume!
Go home immediately and get somebody to teach you what a keyboard is and how it works!

Synthetic voice.

Listen to this passage
Your browser does not support the audio element.
You use your synthetic voice at school or in leisure time.
What does your synthetic voice actually do?
It tells you exactly what appears on your screen.
Like somebody describing you what he sees?
Quite so!
What is the difference?
Oh, there are some good points with a synthetic voice, you know!
It never gets tired, never gets angry with you, even if you fall asleep and do not understand what it is telling you!
But...
What if you don't understand a word, or a whole sentence?
You know what to do!
Just use your cursor keys, like you would do in a computer game.

If you don't play computer games imagine that you were looking for something on your desk, on your table, or on the floor, and somebody helped you by saying "two steps right", or "just one step backward".....
That's it. With your cursor keys you can walk one step forward, backward, right or left, just as you would move around a room.

Skills

To be able to do things independently is the most exciting experience in life!
In Musicland you can do a lot of things without having to wait for somebody to help you...
You don't believe me?
Have a go and see!

Have you ever wished that you had a particular ability?
What is an ability?
It is being able to do something when you want to do it, for as long as you wish...
But in order to get something, you have to know how to get it.
Suppose that you need somebody to help you, maybe because you don't know where they put such and such a thing that you are looking for.
What do you do in this case?
You call somebody, that is to say, you open your mouth and use your voice to call their name.
In Musicland, all the characters have some rules and, if you know those rules, they do exactly what you want them to do.
Rules can sometimes seem boring but, in fact, they can free us to do what we want in the way that we want.

You have only just arrived here in Musicland, so I am not going to bother you with a list of rules. I will just mention that, in Musicland, the rules are very precise, and if you know them you can do a lot.
They are like a railway, that is if you follow them, you can go as far as you like!

What can you do in Musicland?
You can listen to music.
You can make your own music.
How?
Just using your keyboard and listening to the machine playing what you are writing...

Really!

You already do make music, I am sure.
But what if you want to understand it better?
Try to download Braille Music Learning